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Trump brings a new edge to Reagan's 'South Succotash'

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

President Donald Trump expressed a familiar beef in his recent travels: The "fake news" media won't cover his fake news.

"What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening," he told a crowd estimated at 4,000 Tuesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, Mo.

What people were seeing and reading was a mixed picture of whether his trade war is a good idea. For example, Trump would celebrate Thursday the reopening of a U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Ill., near St. Louis. Officials credited the reopening to Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs on China and other steel exporters.

But China struck back with retaliatory tariffs that were hurting the state's soybean farmers, who, as the Chicago Tribune reported, ship more to China than any other state. By Thursday, in Iowa, Trump would be touting a plan to provide as much as $12 billion in emergency relief to farmers caught in the crossfire of the trade war that his tariffs ignited.

At the VFW gathering he singled out a sad story about farmers that he saw on NBC earlier in the day. "It was heart-throbbing," he said. I think he meant "heartbreaking," unless he has a previously undisclosed coronary condition. "In fact, I wanted to say, 'I got to do something about this Trump. Terrible.' "

But, no, the real problem, he said in an oddly paranoid-sounding scenario, is that NBC's piece was "done by the lobbyists and by the people that they hire," whoever that is.

 

Advising farmers and other Americans to "just be a little patient," he pulled a familiar rhetorical move: He pointed at the press riser, attacked "the fake news" media and assured the crowd, "Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people."

With that, he reminded me of another president's media complaints. "Is it news," asked Ronald Reagan in 1982, "that some fellow out in South Succotash someplace who has just been laid off should be interviewed nationwide?"

You bet. The journalist's job is to cover news, not make us comfortable.

But Reagan, as some of us news consumers recall, responded to such media disclosures with jolly kindness compared to today's president. Reagan didn't have Twitter to get his message out, but "The Great Communicator," as one of his aides branded him, didn't need any such gadgets either.

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(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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